One of the most reliable tools in my cryptocurrency investing toolbox is lending on the Poloniex exchange. It's the old-faithful, slow-but-steady, go-to champion of my passive investment strategies. And it's an answer to the age old question: if you have a large amount of Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency lying around, what can you do with it? Make more of it, of course!
I'll be talking mostly about Poloniex, my favorite exchange for a number of reasons: the UI is robust & easy to use, the charting is gorgeous (even on my phone), and there is a very large selection of different cryptocurrencies to trade. But everyone has their own preferences. Other exchanges support lending as well, and the general principles discussed here apply equally well to each of them, though the nitty gritty of the UI aspects will differ.
What does lending mean in this context?
There are two types of trades you can do on Poloniex: you can go long (buy low sell high) and you can go short (sell high buy low). In order to short the currency pair ETH/BTC you would perform the following steps:
- Borrow some amount of Ether (ETH), let's say 50 ETH for this example. You are now obligated to pay back 50 ETH, plus some interest, to the lender at some point in the future.
- Sell that ETH for Bitcoin (BTC). Let's imagine you get 5 BTC for all that ETH.
- Price of ETH goes down. Woohoo, this is good news for shorters!
- Buy back the 50 ETH you sold earlier. But now, because of the lower price, it only costs you 4 BTC.
- Return the 50 ETH (plus interest) to the person you borrowed it from.
- The difference between the amount of BTC you got for selling ETH vs. the amount you paid to buy the ETH back is your profit (or loss) on the trade. In this case, you got 5 BTC for selling ETH, then paid 4 BTC to buy it back. So your profit is 1 BTC (ignoring the small amount of interest you also paid for the loan).
Sounds a bit complicated, but Poloniex handles the mechanics of the borrow / repay process automatically, so shorters don't have to think about it much. All they have to do is press a button to open a short position, and another button to close it & book profits / loss.
Whenever someone borrows money to open a short position, it's called trading on margin. Note that it's also possible to go long on margin by borrowing Bitcoin.
Tip #1: The rule of thumb for Poloniex is: people borrowing Bitcoin are going long (expecting prices to rise), people borrowing any other cryptocurrency are going short (expecting prices to fall).
The lenders make their profit on the interest they get when the loans are repaid by the margin traders. And that kind of lending is the subject of this article.
So how much can I make from lending?
It varies. Individual cryptocurrencies all have different interest rates, and those rates, which you can set yourself, fluctuate constantly according to supply & demand.
The last couple months, BTC lending rates (to give one example) have typically been between 0.02% - 0.04% per day. Yes, that's right: per day. That doesn't seem like much on first glance, but it adds up over time:
| Daily interest rate (%) | APR (%) |
|---|---|
| 0.01 | 3.65 |
| 0.02 | 7.3 |
| 0.03 | 10.95 |
| 0.04 | 14.6 |
| 0.05 | 18.25 |
What you can make in 1 year given various average daily rates.
During periods of high volatility, interest rates can jump as high as 1% or more per day. You can expect this to happen several times per year as cryptocurrencies go through frequent pump & dump cycles. Typically on an upwards price spike, shorters will arrive in droves (anticipating the subsequent dump) and consume all of the available loans, driving interest rates up. But you have to be quick to take advantage, as rates change fast in these circumstances and won't stay high for very long. Once the inevitable dump occurs, short sellers take profits and then loan demands subside again (an interesting consequence of this behavior is that sudden rises in interest rates for no apparent reason can be an advance indicator that the market thinks a large price movement is imminent).
So you can expect low rates most of the time, punctuated by brief periods of high rates that can be exciting for a few days, averaging out to an APR of 7-10%, maybe a bit more if you're lucky.
I am quite content with 10% per year. Unless you're an expert trader (I'm a crappy trader and not afraid to admit it) this is a much safer way to make money than trading, and still way more than you would get from holding your money in a bank. Plus it's less work than analyzing charting patterns and watching trading positions all day long.
Note: I'm not advocating using 100% of your funds for lending, that would be a terrible idea. Lending is just one component of what should be a balanced investment approach (more on this later).
One more note: Poloniex takes a cut of 15% on all your lending profits, in return for offering this excellent service. So don't forget to take that into account when calculating expected profits.
Pros and cons
Like any investment strategy, you have to weigh the good against the bad and decide if lending is right for your circumstances. Let's summarize:
Advantages
- Strategy is mostly automated; very little manual work required
- Very low risk under normal circumstances
- Higher APR than keeping your money in a bank
Disadvantages
- Lower returns than more aggressive strategies
- Potential lost opportunities from being unable to trade while your capital is tied up in loans (you can't exit a loan whenever you want; rather you must wait for the borrower to pay it back)
- Risk of exchange being hacked / going out of business
Regarding that second disadvantage, it's only really a problem if you are an active trader. If you're like me, you have a long-term view and aim to make a little extra from lending while letting your core holdings gain value over time.
Besides, you should never commit 100% of your capital to loans anyway. Always leave some in reserve to take advantage of good opportunities as they come along. Of the Bitcoin I keep on Poloniex, 15% is for regular trading, 15% is collateral for margin trading, and the remaining 70% is for lending. If I was a better trader, I might adjust those ratios a bit more toward the trading side.
Okay, you say, sounds like a non-issue, but cryptomancer what do you mean by "risk of exchange being hacked"? Are you serious? Yes. Yes I am. This is a good point to step into
A Cautionary Tale
Let's rewind to late July 2016, just a month or so ago. I had 800 ETH parked on the Bitfinex exchange and was making decent returns from lending, about 10 ETH per month at the time (Bitfinex had much better interest rates than Poloniex when they first started offering ETH margin trading). But I had a two-week vacation to Malaysia coming up at the start of August, and was a bit nervous about leaving my investments on the exchange unattended while I was gone.
So I turned off autorenew on all my loans and let the borrowers pay them back one by one, then on July 29 moved all my ETH off Bitfinex into my private Ethereum wallet. The next day I left on vacation ready to have some fun, with my investments safely secured. A few days later, relaxing in a cafe with free wifi, I decided to check my usual crypto news sources and see what I was missing. This headline was there to greet me:
Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/bitfinex-hack-bitcoin/
Holy crap, I thought, my blood turning cold. Thank God I moved all my ETH off the exchange. Reading further, I found out only Bitcoin had been stolen. So even if my ETH had still been on the exchange, it would have been safe. Or so I thought, until several days later this gem came out:
That's right, all Bitfinex users were taking a 36% haircut across the board, across all asset types. If I hadn't, by pure dumb luck, moved all my ETH out of Bitfinex because of my vacation, I would have suffered a 288 ETH loss, equivalent to more than $3000 at pre-hack prices.
The moral of the story is that although rare, exchange hacks are a fact of life in this young industry, and you can't really see them coming. The chances of being caught in one are definitely non-zero if you lend capital on exchanges over significant stretches of time. Mt. Gox, Gatecoin, Bitfinex... sadly others will be added to this list over time, I'm sure.
Tip #2: Exchange risk is the #1 drawback of lending cryptocurrencies. But it can be mitigated by good risk management strategies. Remember how I said to never lend 100% of your capital? Well, you should never keep 100% of your capital on any one exchange either. The more exchanges you spread it out across, the smaller your loss will be if any one exchange is hit by catastrophe.
For example, ETH is one of the core investments in my portfolio, which I intend to hold for many years. I keep 50% of my ETH in various private wallet accounts. 25% of my ETH is on Poloniex for lending. And I used to lend out the remaining 25% on Bitfinex (since the hack I have been reluctant to resume lending).
However, immediately after Bitfinex resumed trading, I did deposit 1000 ETC (Ethereum Classic) and started lending it out. I don't care so much about my ETC and am willing to lose it if the exchange gets hacked again or ceases operations. But right now, daily ETC interest rates have been holding steady at around 0.2% for over a week, which is quite attractive. I figure that Bitfinex might actually be one of the safest exchanges right now, what with a systems overhaul and increased focus on security since re-opening. I might be wrong, but I'm willing to take that risk.
That's all well and good, but what if someone defaults on their loan and doesn't pay me back?
Poloniex (and other exchanges) have a built-in way to protect against this possibility by force liquidating accounts that get themselves into trouble. When you trade on margin, your account balance is used as collateral to protect against losses, and that balance determines the limit of how much you can actually borrow. If a trade turns into a disaster and unrealized losses become too high, after a certain threshold Poloniex will automatically close your position and pay back the loan from your account balance.
Theoretically it's possible, when the market is extremely volatile, for prices to move fast enough that forced liquidation can't keep up and Poloniex can't get a good enough price to completely pay back the loan. However, these cases are exceedingly rare. I've been lending on Poloniex for over a year and never suffered a single default on any of the thousands of small loans I've given out.
So for all practical purposes, you have a 99.999% guarantee that loans will be paid back.
Great, I'm convinced. Hurry up and tell me how to actually lend!
Okay, okay. The actual mechanics of it are quite straightforward. Let's start by dissecting the controls on the Poloniex lending page and then I'll explain my preferred method.
Step 1: Transfer funds into your lending wallet
First select Balances -> Transfer Balances from the Poloniex main menu. On the Transfer Balances screen you need to decide what cryptocurrency you want to lend, and then transfer some of it from your exchange or margin account into your lending account, as shown here:
Note that the Exchange, Margin, and Lending columns will only show the funds you actually have available to transfer between those accounts. Capital that is locked up in orders or existing loans is not shown.
Also, not every single cryptocurrency on Poloniex is available for margin trading (and thus lending). If it doesn't have an entry in the Coin column, then you can't lend it.
Step 2: Put your loan offers out there in the wild!
Once your lending account is funded, you're ready to let the good times roll! Click on Lending from the main menu, and you'll get this screen:
Let's go over each part of it.
My Balances - shows your free capital in each account, just like the Transfer Balances screen. To create new loan offers you must have a number shown in the Lending column. Click on an entry in the Coin list to see the lending information for that specific cryptocurrency.
Loan Demands - don't even look at this. It's worthless. Most people, when they open a margin position, don't really care what interest rate they have to pay. The system will automatically loan out money at whatever the lowest offer rate happens to be at the time. That said, there is a feature that allows margin traders to specify they won't accept a loan if the interest rate is higher than a specified threshold. And that's where these loan demands come from.
Loan Offers - this is a list of all available loans that lenders are currently offering, sorted by interest rate. The current lowest rate plus total amount being offered gives you a way to see how much demand there is for margin trading of this particular cryptocurrency. Typically you will want to offer a competitive interest rate near the top of the offer list or your offer will rarely be taken (since Poloniex automatically loans from the top of the offer list whenever a new margin position is opened).
Offer BTC - to add a new loan offer to the Loan Offers list, fill out the information in this box.
- Duration means the maximum amount of time you will give the borrower to pay you back. The borrower may pay you back and close the loan at any time up to this limit (sometimes when rates are very volatile, you may notice loans being paid back within seconds!). So you will be guaranteed to get your money back plus interest within this timeframe. Of course the amount of interest you get will depend greatly upon how long the loan is open. Remember that listed rates are how much you would get in 1 day (loans paid back within seconds will generate just a negligible dust amount).
- Auto-renew, if checked, will instruct the system to automatically create a new loan offer with the exact same terms as the previous one, whenever a loan is paid back. Note that you can disable auto-renew on active loans whenever you want.
My Open Loan Offers - these are loan offers you have created, but nobody has taken the loan yet (i.e. your loan is still sitting in the Loan Offers list).
My Active Loans - when an open offer is taken by a margin trader, it moves to this list and you start making interest on it. When someone pays back a loan, it will vanish from this list (or move back to My Open Loan Offers if you have auto-renew turned on) and the interest paid will be added to your lending account balance shown in My Balances and the Offer BTC box. The green numbers in the Fees column represent the total interest accrued on each loan, which will be paid to you when the loan is closed by the borrower.
Awesome! Now let's talk strategy!
Here is my preferred method of lending. Do this for each cryptocurrency you want to lend:
- Set your rate to be just a smidge lower than the current lowest rate. For example, if the lowest rate is 0.0499%, set yours to 0.0498% or 0.049% if you want to be aggressive. Don't worry if someone instantly undercuts you, it's not worth getting into a bidding war with a bot and dragging down the rates. But in general try to make sure you're at the top of the offer list or very close to it.
- For the amount, go all in with as much as you've got in your lending account (but as discussed earlier your lending account should never contain 100% of your total holdings).
- For duration go with 2 days. Anything longer and you'll regret it if there's a sudden spike upwards in lending rates. However, if rates are ludicrously high (say 1% or more) go with 5 or even 10 days to try to lock in the high rates.
- Leave auto-renew turned on. This means you won't have to micro-manage loans so much. If rates start to rise, then you can turn auto-renew off and wait for the 2 day duration to expire before manually offering a new loan with a higher rate. Conversely, if rates fall and your loan offers stop getting taken, cancel them and set a lower rate.
- Every morning, spend the first 5 minutes of the day checking your loans and make any adjustments necessary (basically repeat steps 1-4 whenever you notice unused money sitting in your lending account and try to keep all your loans active as rates change). I like to do this as soon as I wake up, before I take my morning shower.
Got any more tips?
You bet I do!
Tip #3: Always follow the above strategy religiously. After a while, it should get to be like muscle memory: you should be able to go through the steps in just a few minutes by rote, without even thinking about it.
Tip #4: Keep your money working for you in active loans all the time regardless of whether the current rates are high or not. That's better than setting too high rates and then having your money sitting around useless when your loan offers don't get taken.
Tip #5: It's OK to have dozens of small loans open. Typically you'll start with one or two big loans, and then those will fracture into smaller and smaller loans with various rates as time goes on. It makes my OCD twitch, but it's normal, don't worry about it. Also, your entire loan offer might not be taken all at once. People could take small bites out of it, generating several active loans from one single loan offer.
So there you have it. Now go forth and loan, my fellow Steemians. And may the interest rates be ever in your favor!
This is so exciting. I want to read more!
Poloniex has some great documentation on margin trading & lending: https://poloniex.com/support/aboutMarginTrading/
For a different perspective on Poloniex lending, check out this excellent article by @nxtblg. He offers some good case studies of lending Factom and Bitshares.
Got some cool lending stories / anecdotes of your own? Know other good articles on this subject? Feel free to share in the comments below!
This was a FANTASTIC read! TYFYS!!!
You're welcome! When I first started lending, I found myself wishing there was a comprehensive guide to show me the ropes. But I couldn't find anything good, so eventually decided to just write one myself.
yes this guide is what I've been looking for, thanks
That's exactly what I was wishing for!
Specifically I was wondering, since bitconnect makes money off trading when there's volatility...
I wanted to know more about what the bitconnect trader is doing,
and also if it's possible to get a similar interest rate as bitconnect (averaging .9 % recently) by doing loans directly on poloniex during volatile pumps?
This was very helpful. I see how interest rates can go up now. Although realistically I also see that they usually aren't that high as 1% so bitconnect is probably what I'll stick with for now.
http://www.rapoet.com/getbcc
Actually 288 eth now would be worth about 110k not 3K, so ur really lucky you moved it off coincidentally
Thinking about it like that really puts things into perspective! Yes, I really did get lucky, it's not an experience I care to repeat. These days I keep all my ETH off exchanges and only lend Bitcoin that won't cripple my portfolio if it gets lost.
KEY update if you could make it - When "Trading" understand that 50BTC worth gets borrowed every minute on average - so higher up the order sheet is better to go... don't just accept 0.050% these days - 0.18% is reasonable and gets hit all the time. We're talking 3X+ return vs being stupid and taking the lowest return - I TOTALLY disagree with that strategy - go up the order book and find the 50BTC above the lowest price loan... then price at the price just below the large block of BTC you see on the screen...
You make a very good point; things have changed in the market since I first wrote this last year, and recently lending rates have been extremely volatile. They fluctuate so much that it is often possible to get much better rates by ignoring the small dribs & drabs at the top of the book and put in a loan offer right in front of a big block at higher rates. Thanks for sharing this advice!
Great article. To be more complete you should tell about automated lending... the next step...
Automated lending, now there's an idea! So far I haven't had the time or inclination to do any research about lending bots, but if you have knowledge in that area feel free to share here.
Checkout Coinlend to automate your lending on Poloniex and Bitfinex!
Love this piece of writing. I've recently started lending on Poloniex and you've given us an easy to understand guide. Thank you.
You're welcome, glad this has been helpful for you!
Hi! Might i ask you how much for the percentage you could earn and the percentage base on value of the coin you lend ?
If theres a hard fork while you are lending, you will only be repaid the original coin and not the new coin.
Have people stoppped lending recently because of possible hard fork?
Great article. Can't believe you only made 4 cents on it? How is that possible.
Well, I was new on Steemit at the time so people paid little attention to my writing at first... I bet the outcome would be a lot different if I wrote this today. :-)
Great Article it had all the info i wanted to learn about Lending . Thanks for Posting.
My pleasure, I'm really glad people are finding this useful!
Hey Cryptomancer, great post. If I wanted to get into loaning out crypto starting with a low investment like $100 or so, what coin would offer the best margins and have good demand for loans of small amounts on Polinex?
Right now Bitcoin offers by far the best returns, which have been averaging about 0.1% daily interest for the past couple weeks. It's a great time to start trying this out!
great article! very informative even for someone like myself who has been trading altcoins for a little while now
Awesome, I have been wondering how the lending works and you have explained it perfectly. I will start tomorrow :)
Thank you so much for the detailed guide!! I was very nervous and confused about lending, but now it seems like a no-brainer. At first I thought the rate was the same as the APR and I was extremely underwhelmed, haha!
I'm glad this helped make sense of it for you! Yeah, those rates do seem underwhelming until you realize how they stack up over time. And once you get the hang of it, you can almost manage it on auto pilot just spending a few minutes each day to make any necessary adjustments. Good luck and have fun!
Well written, useful information..... Thanks!
Has anyone tried using Poloniex Lending Bot?
whytewolf
I got it all set up but then decided not to use it, they charge 10% of what you make using the bot, but you have to transfer Bitcoin to them manually for their cut, and the network transfer fee would be more than I'm making currently.
Try sending them Bitcoin from exchanges that do not charge transfer fees - for example: GDAX.
Lending sounds great. However, giving away 15% to Poloniex, then 10% to a bot means only 75% for me.
Not using a bot is cumbersome and time consuming.
In addition I have another worry: Keeping larger and larger amounts on Poloniex isn't a wise idea.
So for me, lendig is more like a pastime and not investment.
Checkout Coinlend to automate your lending - it is free!
Thank you for this post, it helped get me started in lending!
You're quite welcome, glad it was able to help you out!
I feel bless to have found this article, I signed up recently at Poloniex and was very confused about Margin Trade and Lending , didn't know how to go about it. This article has opened a new world to me. Thank you for this wonder and educative post.
You're very welcome, really glad my article was able to help you out! Now is a great time to get started with lending, as BTC interest rates have been pretty high lately.
Good article bro!
Wow. I am new to crypto, and articles like this are quite helpful, thanks!
You're welcome, glad I can be of assistance. You can expect more posts like this in the future, focusing on different aspects of the crypto ecosystem.
Yup, that is one of the reasons I subscribed. I am also readingnup on it from all other sources I can find, but yours is perhaps the best written I've seen so far. :-)
Thank you for this post. I'm actually happy there are not many minnows here so I can use your wonderfull guide for myself. I already bookmarked it with name "Loan shark poloniex" xD and will for sure try it with my small amount of crypto. Thank for sharing your knowledge and I hope your wonderful efforts pay up more in future.
You're welcome, really glad you found it useful! I like your bookmark name, that could be a great alternative title: "Getting into the loan shark business on Poloniex"
hello! Is there any risk of not getting paid? thanks in advance..
No, you will always get paid the interest you are owed. Poloniex and the other exchanges that support this implement margin calls, meaning that if a borrower suffers large losses they will be forced by the exchange to close their position and repay loans before they become in danger of defaulting. A default is technically possible if market conditions are so extreme that the built-in safeguards can't close out a position fast enough, but the chances of that happening are extremely low. In all the many months I've been lending, there has never been a single default.
Great post. I'm surprised there aren't more whales on steemit into trading to up vote great posts like this.
I appreciate the sentiment. Whale traders, that's what we need!
Great post you made here about margin trading on Poloniex. I was considering to try it but I don't possess enough info. Now I will try with your guide. Thank you!
You're quite welcome. Good luck, hope it goes well for you!
Very meaty article! Lots of good info here.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Lending Bitcoin now is big business. See how to lend and borrow bitcoin and how to earn massive amounts of bitcoin extremely easily https://xcoins.io/investors?r=1vxzhz
Really great article thank you! :)
what a great post. Cant believe it only worth 4cents!
Very helpful post. Thanks a lot
Excellent, extensive article. Thank you.
I have some worries though. Where are my coins at a safer place? Leaving on Poloniex in my account or leaving them on Poloniex but being lent out?
In case of a hack is it safer to have them in another user's account (lending)?
About the coming Segwit: I think it would be safe withdrawing everything from Poloniex for those difficult times.
In the event of an exchange hack, I don't think one option would really be safer than the other. I agree, withdrawing from the exchange in advance of August 1 is my preferred option. But on the other hand, if you do that you'll have to navigate any potential fork yourself in regards to upgrading wallet versions, syncing to the right chain, etc. Big exchanges such as Poloniex will have a plan in place for that, and I'm sure many people will simply find it easier to just let them deal with it.
you can also hold your Bitcoin in Btcpop.co's risk free (besides implied 3rd party risk) savings account. Historic ROI is 5-15% APR. 100% collateral loans another good way to grow Bitcoin
EXCELLENT article! I was researching on Poloniex Lending, and came across this article which clarified the whole concept. Many thanks for sharing!
I was just starting to get curious about the lending feature on Poloneix, and had several questions come up as I looked into it. Your fantastic article answered all of them! thanks so much!
It is a pity the lending rates are so low these days. It still makes sense to lend, but just the returns are a fractions of what they used to be it seems from your screenshots.
I am always so thrilled when Steemit articles are the results of my google searches. And now, thanks to you, I am lending on Poloniex with great joy. Admittedly, rates are far lower than what you mentioned in your article, but still, it's essentially a 3% interest rate. I only wish I had known about it a month ago. I wouldn't have sold so much ltc at $100, and I'd still have it now, at the much higher value. But at least now I can put some there for longer term and no longer feel tempted to sell at the highs.
Excellent! I started into margins and loans on poloniex just before reading this and is all seems to line up with what I saw. Thank you for a well written article
Greetings i was do some research and came across this. I understand it was posted a year ago I'm curious to know what the outcome was. I'm currently looking to invest in Lending and would appreciate your help thank you
Great info, I would like to see higher interest rates, but hey I'm just Poloniex offers the Lending program, I discuss a little here - https://steemit.com/vincentb/@crob/lending-on-poloniex
Great post... Solved a lot of issues for me
Checkout Coinlend for lending automatisation on Poloniex and Bitfinex- free of charge!
Interesting note from the future for whomever might stumble up on this prior to having access to knowing current rates. At this moment in May 2017. The loan offers right now are at around .0056%. About 10% of what they were when this article was written.
Great Explanation, now even I got it...
Thank you for this post mate.. It really explains the whole process..